Advice for Arguing with Millennials

Jun 26, 2015

RUSH: Max in Scottsdale, Arizona, next up, how are you, sir?

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. It’s a pleasure to speak with you. My dad recently gave me a signed copy of your book, “See, I Told You So.” It belonged to my grandpa. I’ve been reading it a little bit. It seems like things have gotten a lot worse. You wrote about Ice T and a song about killing cops and how they’re really celebrated. And I’ll tell you that today that pop culture, and hip hop in particular, is even worse than it was back then.

And today what it means to be a man and a rugged individual is no longer something that’s respected or celebrated. It’s ridiculed and we hold up these other guys like Ice T and the cop killers. It makes me feel kind of alone out here trying to live up to my grandparents and their values. It was cool opening your book and seeing all this stuff and I appreciate it. But I’m a little lost as to where we go today and also wanted to check in on your marketing plan for Millennials and see how that was going.

RUSH: You want to know how my marketing plan for Millennials is going.

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: Not very well. (laughing) What do you think: How’s it going?

CALLER: You kind of keep it close to the vest.

RUSH: That’s it. When you have a marketing strategy, my theory and philosophy is you don’t announce it, you just implement it. If you admit to people that you’re targeting them for anything, either to separate them from their money or to get them to change their mind and agree with you, why tell them that that’s your objective, because they just prepare a resistance to you.

So I’m prepared not to give any details of the secret marketing plan to persuade Millennials. And I’m not going to now. I’m not going to now either. It’s not going to be easy, and I’ll tell you why. And again, I hate to be repetitive. But I’m sure there are people listening today that haven’t in a while. I’m sure there’s all kinds of people tuning in today, Snerdley, who just want to gloat and they’re hoping to hear all kinds of sadness and anger and misery. I’m not going to give them the satisfaction of that. But the Millennials in this country, the vast majority of them, they know things aren’t right. Most everybody does.

This isn’t the United States of America that most people know or expect, not economically, not in terms of people’s good vibes about the future. But the percentage of people in poll after poll think the country is going in the wrong direction and the number keeps expanding. Here’s the difference, though: In previous times when people have thought the country was in the wrong direction, or in the right direction, either one, there was always, in the world of politics, people always tied those opinions to a particular political party or a particular president given who was in power.

Meaning, when the economy was in the tank, the president got the blame for it. When the country was on the wrong track, the president and his party got the blame for it. And when parties lost elections, particularly if they lost big in landslides, then it was incumbent upon that party to respect public opinion, go out and openly promise the changes they were going to make to once again appeal to people who voted against them.

That’s gone because today’s Millennials do not associate any of the current circumstances of the country with the political party in power. Amazingly, everybody’s blaming the Republicans for everything, and the Republicans haven’t been in power for six years. The Republicans had nothing to do with what happened in Charleston, South Carolina, had nothing to do with any mass shooting. The Republicans had nothing to do with what went on in Baltimore. The Republicans had nothing to do with what went on in Ferguson. The Republicans had nothing to do with the economic policies in the last seven years, and yet Millennials blame them. And a lot of other people blame the Republicans. It’s the most amazing thing

BREAK TRANSCRIPTRUSH: Anthony, Riverside, California, heading back to the phones. Anthony, thank you for waiting and hello.

CALLER: Hi. It’s an honor to talk to you, Rush.

RUSH: Thank you very much.

CALLER: My question is, what can a young college conservative such as myself do to help promote conservative principles, just to help keep this nation great?

RUSH: That’s such a great question. See, I think I have some answers for you.

CALLER: All right!

RUSH: The first thing you can do, Anthony, is do not allow any attempts to make you believe that you are a freak, a kook, an odd ball, a minority. Do not them marginalize you. Remain proud of what you believe. Remain dedicated to what you believe. Do not let them treat you in a secondary manner or treat you in such a way as they’re the big clique and you’ll never get it. Don’t let that affect you. They’ll treat you that way. Just do not allow them to change your own self-worth, okay?

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: That’s number one.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: That’s key.

CALLER: All right.

RUSH: If you can hold onto your self worth and all this and you’ve got the rest of this, the next thing you need to do is go on offense. With any of these brain-dead Millennials believe all this garbage that they can’t explain, you’ve got to have the guts to challenge them. You’ve got to be able to take time to explain why you believe what you believe, because they can’t do that about what they believe. Hang on. Do not go away, Anthony. Hang on just a second.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. Here’s Anthony. We’re back to Anthony, Riverside, California. I had to rush through that because there were time constraints. But let me take a brief pause now here and give you a chance to react to the first bit of advice I gave. Are you comfortable with that?

CALLER: Yeah, I think it’s spot on. I’ve gotten into my fair share of arguments with some of my colleagues.

RUSH: Anthony, they don’t argue with you. They’re going to try to put you down. They’re going to try to ridicule you. They’re going to insult you. They can’t argue with you. The thing to realize is you’re dealing with people caught up in a wave of emotion, and the wave of emotion that has them caught up is equality and fairness and ending discrimination. They haven’t the slightest idea how to intellectually translate to you why they support, other than to say, on gay marriage, they’ll say, “Well, I just think if we can get married why can’t they? I mean, they can’t help who they love and there’s nothing wrong with more love in the world.”

And you’re going to have to be able, I mean, you’re calling me to ask me what you can do to advocate conservatism. You’re going to have to be able to talk to people in your generation, and you’re going to have to be able to explain to them, not by putting them down — don’t join that fray — just explain what you believe and why. As a conservative you’re going to be able to do that. You’re going to be able to tell them constitutionally why this Supreme Court ruling is full of it, and why the 14th Amendment has nothing to do with any of this.

You’re going to be able to explain the belief that you have that you’re not anti-gay, but that marriage means something, words mean something. And once you change the definition of the word marriage, then anything goes. And then you point out something very simple. The left is out there saying it’s all about inclusiveness. It’s not about inclusiveness. I’ll tell you what, ask any one of your Millennial buddies if you get in a discussion about this. Use the example of a gay couple walking into a bakery wanting a cake and the proprietor saying, “No, our religious beliefs say we can’t support gay marriage.” Ask them why don’t the gay people just leave and go to another place that will bake them the cake.

There’s got to be all kinds of bakeries all over town that will bake them the cake. Why do they stay there? And why do they sue and why do they put that bakery out of business? Ask them to explain that to you. And if they are honest, they will tell you that it isn’t about gay marriage. It’s about getting even with or destroying bigotry or some such thing, and then you’ve got them. “So it’s not gay marriage that you support. You’re willing to deny people their religious freedom if it means –” You can pretzel them. You can twist them up. But what you can do is expose the fact that they’re really not behind all the things they’re behind intellectually. That they’re caught up in waves of emotion.

The next thing I would tell you, do not expect them to ever acknowledge that you’re right. Do not ever expect them to change their mind in front of you. And, in fact, do not ever expect them to change their mind. You never know when they will. But the point is you’ll be doing something that nobody else is doing, and that is engaging them and pointing other alternatives, different ways to think about this, in ways that show you’re not a bigot and you’re not anti-anything.

You’re concerned about the Constitution. You’re concerned about tradition and institutions that have been developed long before this country was even formed. Marriage has a specific societal purpose. It was not designed to discriminate against people that can’t get married. There’s no evil guy that invented marriage for the express purpose of discriminating against people. That’s not why it came into existence. You have to realize that the people you’re talking to in your age group have had their minds poisoned by professors and teachers all the way through their lives. It’s a monumental task, Anthony, but it could be something you end up enjoying if for no other reason than you’ll perfect your own skills at persuasion.

CALLER: All my friends are like there’s no alternative. We have to allow gay marriage. Why not just say straight marriage isn’t in the Constitution either. How about we just make everything in the government like a civil union, and then leave it up to the individual and churches and other places to decide what they accept as marriage.

RUSH: You want me to answer that? I’ll tell you what they would say to that. That’s not acceptable, because you’re still standing for people being discriminated against by not being allowed to get married which means they can’t get benefits which means they can’t get hospital or whatever they come up with in this. When you propose alternatives that accomplish the same thing that they claim to want with marriage, they won’t go for it because the objective here is not to join something.

I mean, I’ve watched plenty of conservative commentators and liberal commentators on TV today saying the great thing about this is that now it’s inclusive, that people that want to get married now can. It’s not about inclusive. It is about destroying. This is about ridding a tradition or an institution. This is about redefining what is normal. It is not about inclusion. And George Takei proves it when he says: and our next target is religious freedom.

They’re just getting started with this, Anthony. But you asked me what you can do as a young conservative to help advocate for conservative causes. You’ve got to get really good at explaining them. You’ve got to get really good at telling people why you think what you think. And Anthony, not to discourage you, but there’s probably nobody better at that than I am. And I’ve been doing it for 27 years, and I’m hated by 30 percent of the country. So don’t expect to be loved at the end of this. Your objective is not to be loved. Your objective is to inform. Your objective is to make people think. Your objective is to engage in critical thinking for people to challenge what they’ve been taught by orthodoxy.

CALLER: I’m a black conservative, so I get some extra hate, too, sometimes.

RUSH: Then you know. You know. Exactly right. Well, it’s a yeoman’s job. I wish you all the best doing it. I wish there were more people like you who wanted to.

CALLER: Thank you so much.

RUSH: I’d recruit some allies, too. I’d get some of your buddies, friends, to join you and make this, not a game, but make it a little project, because you’re going to run into these little nimrods everywhere you go, particularly on campus. Just make sure that the women you engage with, make sure you don’t care about them, and you’re not trying to get a date because you never will. Once you get into this, you’re never going to get a date. They’re never going to go to dinner with you. So make sure the women you get engaged with in this manner are not women you care about romantically.

CALLER: Yep.

RUSH: I mean, you might have a one or two-time fling, but you’re not going to have anything lasting from this because they’ll end up hating your guts. But that you can wing. You can find that on your own. Don’t take my word for that. That’s something as a young man you’ll learn on your own. No need to be instructed there. I appreciate the call. I appreciate the chance to give you some advice. I don’t engage in that much. And by the way, when you get into this, other ideas, other means of persuasion will pop into your head. You’ll see what you run into and you’ll see the kind of opposition you get. That will instruct you and inform you where you have to go.

Just one thing, one more thing, and I’m rethinking this. I’ve always said do not get in somebody’s face and point a finger at them because you’ll just get them to recoil. And that probably is still true. The best persuasion is stealth. People who end up being persuaded who do not know that has happened to them. The best way to bring that about is you establish a set of circumstances to which the conclusion is obvious. They come up with the idea, the conclusion themselves. They think they’re smart. You’ve persuaded them but they will never know it happened. There’s an art to this. As you get into it and engage yourself you will find all these techniques. You’ll find out what works best for you.